How Capitalist Were the ‘Bourgeois Revolutions’?

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Post
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Canonical Version ◽  
Second International

Abstract The canonical version of the ‘bourgeois revolutions’ has been under attack from both pro-capitalist ‘Revisionist’ historians and ‘Political Marxists’. Neil Davidson’s book How Revolutionary Were the Bourgeois Revolutions? provides a thorough review of the intellectual history of the notion of the bourgeois revolution and attempts to rescue the concept from varied criticism. Despite distancing himself from problematic formulations of the bourgeois revolution inherited from Second-International Marxism, Davidson’s own framework reproduces many of the historical and conceptual problems of this tradition.

scholarly journals Ein Modell Politischer Diskursanalyse

2002 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAIMUND OTTOW
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
General Model ◽  
Discourse Theory ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Cambridge School

The author discusses the discourse-theory of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ (Quentin Skinner, John Pocock), which is favorably compared to alternative approaches in the field of the intellectual history of political thought. Some conceptual problems of this kind of discoursetheory are discussed and some remedies proposed, resulting in the formulation of a general model, which could be applied to contemporary debates, exemplified by a short analysis of the discursive situation of modern liberalism.

scholarly journals THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS MOVEMENTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 267-287
Author(s):  
Renan Springer de Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Conceptual Problems

Abstract The sociology of knowledge that became established as an academic discipline ‘lives’ alongside another that never did so, but nevertheless manifests itself within other disciplines, including the philosophy of science, the history of science, and intellectual history. I discuss the ways in which each of them has evolved. I argue that while the former works by reflecting on the conditions of possibility of the production of knowledge about knowledge itself, the nature of the knowledge produced under these conditions, the metatheoretical ‘dilemmas’ that supposedly plague the production of this knowledge, the means by which these dilemmas can be ‘overcome,’ the conceptual problems supposedly involved in the production of this knowledge, and the ways through which these conceptual problems can be solved, the latter works by offering solutions to specific empirical problems.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
James Madison ◽  
Modern Conception ◽  
Political World ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Constitutional Thought

The changed conception of conversation that emerged by c.1700 was about to expand its scope enormously – to the broad culture of Enlightenment Europe, to the fine arts, to philosophy and into the broad political world, both via the conception of public opinion and via the constitutional thought of James Madison (1751–1836). In the Enlightenment, the early modern conception of conversation would expand into a whole wing of Enlightenment thought. The intellectual history of the heirs of Cicero and Petrarch would become the practice of millions and the constitutional architecture of a great republic....

Indian Sex Life

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Durba Mitra
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Social Thought ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Social Progress ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Global History ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Indentured Servitude ◽  
History Of

During the colonial period in India, European scholars, British officials, and elite Indian intellectuals—philologists, administrators, doctors, ethnologists, sociologists, and social critics—deployed ideas about sexuality to understand modern Indian society. This book shows how deviant female sexuality, particularly the concept of the prostitute, became foundational to this knowledge project and became the primary way to think and write about Indian society. The book reveals that deviant female sexuality was critical to debates about social progress and exclusion, caste domination, marriage, widowhood and inheritance, women's performance, the trafficking of girls, abortion and infanticide, industrial and domestic labor, indentured servitude, and ideologies about the dangers of Muslim sexuality. British authorities and Indian intellectuals used the concept of the prostitute to argue for the dramatic reorganization of modern Indian society around Hindu monogamy. The book demonstrates how the intellectual history of modern social thought is based in a dangerous civilizational logic built on the control and erasure of women's sexuality. This logic continues to hold sway in present-day South Asia and the postcolonial world. Reframing the prostitute as a concept, the book overturns long-established notions of how to write the history of modern social thought in colonial India, and opens up new approaches for the global history of sexuality.

Idleness and Freedom in Michel de Montaigne’s “Essays”

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-202
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Spiritual Quest ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Sextus Empiricus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship

The article advances a hypothesis about the composition of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Specialists in the intellectual history of the Renaissance have long considered the relationship among Montaigne’s thematically heterogeneous thoughts, which unfold unpredictably and often seen to contradict each other. The waywardness of those reflections over the years was a way for Montaigne to construct a self-portrait. Spontaneity of thought is the essence of the person depicted and an experimental literary technique that was unprecedented in its time and has still not been surpassed. Montaigne often writes about freedom of reflection and regards it as an extremely important topic. There have been many attempts to interpret the haphazardness of the Essays as the guiding principle in their composition. According to one such interpretation, the spontaneous digressions and readiness to take up very different philosophical notions is a form of of varietas and distinguo, which Montaigne understood in the context of Renaissance philosophy. Another interpretation argues that the Essays employ the rhetorical techniques of Renaissance legal commentary. A third opinion regards the Essays as an example of sprezzatura, a calculated negligence that calls attention to the aesthetic character of Montaigne’s writing. The author of the article argues for a different interpretation that is based on the concept of idleness to which Montaigne assigned great significance. He had a keen appreciation of the role of otium in the culture of ancient Rome and regarded leisure as an inner spiritual quest for self-knowledge. According to Montaigne, idleness permits self-directedness, and it is an ideal form in which to practice the freedom of thought that brings about consistency in writing, living and reality, in all of which Montaigne finds one general property - complete inconstancy. Socratic self-knowledge, a skepticism derived from Pyrrho of Elis and Sextus Empiricus, and a rejection of the conventions of traditional rhetoric that was similar to Seneca’s critique of it were all brought to bear on the concept of idleness and made Montaigne’s intellectual and literary experimentation in the Essays possible.

Epistemic Crisis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
First Year ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Media And Politics ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Ecosystem

This chapter describes the contours of the epistemic crisis in media and politics that threatens the integrity of democratic processes, erodes trust in public institutions, and exacerbates social divisions. It lays out the centrality of partisanship, asymmetric polarization, and political radicalization in understanding the current maladies of political media. It investigates the main actors who used the asymmetric media ecosystem to influence the formation of beliefs and the propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere, and to manipulate political coverage during the election and the first year of the Trump presidency, , including “fake news” entrepreneurs/political clickbait fabricators; Russian hackers, bots, and sockpuppets; the Facebook algorithm and online echo chambers; and Cambridge Analytica. The chapter also provides definitions of propaganda and related concepts, as well as a brief intellectual history of the study of propaganda.

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